TAIPEI (AFP) - A giant yellow inflatable duck which exploded on New Year's Eve returned to a Taiwan port on Friday after it was repaired and cleaned, organisers said.

Hundreds turned out in Keelung on the north of the island to welcome back the 18-metre-tall (59-feet) duck following two days of maintenance after it burst and deflated into a floating yellow disc Tuesday.

It was the second time that a replica of the bath toy had burst while on show in Taiwan. The duck exploded just hours before crowds gathered to count down the new year.

"The warmest welcome for the little yellow duck to come back to Keelung port. I am very excited and happy all over again," fan Mandy Liu wrote on a Facebook page created for the Keelung exhibition.

Another fan, Wu Hsien-che, wrote: "We should pray to the gods and ghosts to ensure the exhibition can go on smoothly."

The duck burst because of rising pressure caused by rapid temperature changes.

Devices have since been put inside the duck for 24-hour monitoring of temperature and pressure, organiser Huang Jing-tai told reporters.

Since 2007 the original duck designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman - which is 16.5 metres tall - has travelled to 13 cities in nine countries, including Brazil, Australia and Hong Kong, on its journey around the world.

Three Taiwanese cities exhibited their versions of the yellow duck in 2013. But all were forced to temporarily suspend the exhibit due to bad weather or damage.

In November, a duck in the northern county of Taoyuan deflated during a 6.3-magnitude earthquake when an air pump stopped working.

Powerful winds caused the duck's rear end to burst while it was being re-inflated.

A "BULLYING" couple ended up forking out more than S$22,000 (RM57,034) out of their pockets in a legal battle with a neighbour after they asked him to transform their property into an English country-style home like his.

Air Force Lieutenant-Colonel Ng Boo Han, in his 40s, and his wife, Audrey-Ann Koo Oi Lian, in her 50s, knocked on the door of retiree Edward Teo Boon Hiang around Christmas 2010 to ask about his house-builder.

They were so impressed with his self-renovated property that they said they wanted to rebuild their single-storey corner terraced home into a similar double-storey house.

The couple said they had a budget of S$350,000 (RM908,072) from which Teo could draw a wage of S$17,500 (RM45,368).

The neighbours signed a two-page agreement in which the couple gave the 61-year-old a free hand to reconstruct their house.

But a year later, their relationship turned sour when a dispute arose over renovation works.

Teo sued them for S$89,000 (RM230,799), which he said they owed him for his work and extra tasks they had demanded he carry out.

The couple counter-claimed almost S$200,000 (RM518,492) for rectification work, accusing Teo of failing to complete the project.

However, in decision grounds released last month, District Judge Loo Ngan Chor called the couple "unsatisfactory witnesses".

A REAL estate agent who began sexually exploiting his stepdaughter when she was 11 years old and raped her when she was 14, was jailed for 32 years.

The 37-year-old was also ordered to be given 24 strokes of the cane, the maximum allowed under the law.

Judicial Commissioner Tan Siong Thye said 32 years was an appropriate deterrent punishment but not a crushing sentence in context of his "despicable and callous crimes".

The man began groping the girl about six months after he married her mother in 2008. He then progressed to other forms of sexual abuse and raped her in 2011.

Last month, the man pleaded guilty to seven charges. Another 11 charges were taken into consideration.

Meanwhile, the High Court has ruled against Nitcharee Peneak­chanasak, who fell onto the tracks of Ang Mo Kio MRT station in 2011 and lost her legs.

The Thai teenager, now 16, had sued transport operator SMRT and the Land Transport Authority for S$3.4mil (RM8.8mil), contending that the defendants had breached their duty of care by failing to ensure that the station was reasonably safe for passengers.

But Justice Vinodh Coomaraswamy dismissed her claim. He found that the station was "reasonably safe" at the time she was injured and so, the defendants are not liable in negligence for those injuries. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - James Avery, a classically trained actor best known for his role as the wealthy uncle of the young rapper Will Smith in the 1990s television comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, has died at age 65.

Avery's death was confirmed to CNN by his publicist, and more widely in a Twitter message on Wednesday by one of the actor's TV co-stars, Alfonso Ribeiro, who played his son, Carlton, on Fresh Prince.

"I'm deeply saddened to say that James Avery has passed away. He was a second father to me. I will miss him greatly," Ribeiro said in a tweet.

According to the celebrity website TMZ, Avery died on Tuesday, New Year's Eve, from complications he suffered after recent open-heart surgery.

Avery's voice was heard in many animated TV series, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Iron Man, and he guest-starred on That '70s Show as a police officer.

But the Atlantic City, New Jersey native gained fame on television playing family patriarch Uncle Philip Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which starred Will Smith as a young rap artist from a tough Philadelphia neighborhood who ends up living with well-heeled relatives in the affluent Bel-Air section of Los Angeles.

The sitcom, which ran on NBC for six years, was built largely around the clash of cultures between the refined lifestyle of Banks and his household and the brash, freewheeling attitudes of his nephew.

The show, a launching pad for Smith's own acting career, ended with a series finale in which Uncle Philip puts his mansion up for sale and it is bought by George and Louise Jefferson - actors Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford - of The Jeffersons.

More recently, Avery had a recurring role as a deputy medical examiner on the cable drama series The Closer. His last screen credit, according to the Internet Movie Database website was the 2013 TV comedy movie Go, Bolivia, Go!

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SONY Pictures and Marvel have rung in the New Year with a new trailer for the blockbuster, including images from the much-anticipated fight scene between Spider-Man and Electro.

Introduced by Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee, the new video reveals shots from an epic fight between the superhero and the villain Electro in New York's Times Square. Rhino and the Green Goblin will join the fray in this intense action scene, which promises to be one of the highlights of Marc Webb's movie.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2, starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Jamie Foxx, arrives in US theatres on May 2.

Watch the special New Year's trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 above or click here. – AFP Relaxnews

Director Jon Chu aims to look beyond stardom in a new documentary on Justin Bieber.

JUSTIN Bieber wasn't sure he liked what he saw. When the petite pop prince from the Great White North first viewed a rough cut of the new documentary Justin Bieber's Believe, he excitedly called its director Jon Chu in the middle of the night to voice concerns.

Not about the less-than-flattering aspects of the movie, like where Chu asks Bieber about him turning into a "train wreck". Or where the director, speaking off-camera, ponders if Bieber will wind up like Michael Jackson or Lindsay Lohan.

The 19-year-old Canadian superstar was hung up on a segment in which he's shown talking about being in love and experiencing heartbreak. Could Chu edit Bieber's halting answers down to more concise sound bites?

"He was, like, 'I'm umming and awwing a lot. Can you, like, clean that up?'," recalled Chu. "'It feels like I don't know what love is.' And I'm, like, 'That's awesome! That you're trying to find the right words is so great. That's why we like you.' He's, like, 'OK. I just don't want to look like an idiot'."

With its insider's view of teenage fandom's foremost icon, Justin Bieber's Believe presents any number of compelling insights on its subject: as a self-starting artiste shown putting pencil to loose leaf pad to write his hit 2012 single Boyfriend.

As a cheerful kid with an extensive wardrobe of harem pants who's at least self-reflective enough to admit his attempt to grow a barely there mustache is "delusional". As a man-child on the cusp of adulthood, able and willing to butt heads with his powerhouse manager Scooter Braun.

But contrary to the avalanche of tabloid reports about the star that materialise on a weekly basis – "Justin Bieber pees into restaurant mop bucket," "Justin Bieber goes butt naked with a guitar in leaked photos!" – he does not seem feckless in the film. In addition to scenes of "Beatlemania"-on-steroids fan adulation and concert footage shot during his last tour, Believe serves to humanise a teenager who is so constantly in the public eye that he's become an abstraction.

And Chu, who directed the singer's 2011 3D concert documentary, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, was probably the only person who could have brought the new movie to screen.

After becoming a trusted member of the star's inner circle and being contracted by Braun to stage-direct Bieber's 2012-13 Believe tour (a first for the filmmaker, who says he had "never directed a high school play before"), Chu initially proposed a behind-the-scenes straight-to-DVD concert movie.

As filming commenced, however, a new narrative came into focus.

"He's a boy. He's a man. What is he? He doesn't know yet but he's taking control," the director said at the Hollywood-adjacent office of his production company, Chu Studios. "The idea was to show him in that vulnerable spot."

Chu, 34, pitched Braun and the singer on a new idea: a warts-and-all rockumentary.

"'I want people to know that you're normal people'," Chu recalled telling them. "'(To Braun) You're not the puppet master and (to Bieber) you're not this douche-bag kid. I want people to know you guys the way I know you'."

The director says he never intended to film a "fluff piece" and was granted wide creative latitude by Braun (whose platinum-plus client roster includes South Korean pop star Psy, Call Me Maybe singer Carly Rae Jepsen and British boy band The Wanted).

Towards that end, the film includes footage that will be familiar to any Belieber worth his or her salt – Bieber flying off the handle at British paparazzi last March, attempting to leap from a van to physically assault the men but being restrained by his security team.

Although the movie could have served to shoot down any number of tabloid rumours, Chu says Believe was never intended as a rejoinder to scandalmongering.

"I didn't want this to be a defence of things he did, because you can just go down the list," he said. "We addressed things having to do with him being a human being – the basis of his character."

Given Chu's up-close-and-personal access to pop musicdom's brightest shining light, it raises the question: Does the director think Bieber will wind up a train wreck like Lindsay Lohan or Michael Jackson?

"The movie is his answer," said Chu. "Maybe the choices haven't been made yet as to whether he'll be a train wreck or not. But there's enough evidence in his life to show he will make the right choice at some point." – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - The governors of New York and New Jersey declared a state of emergency and pleaded with residents to stay indoors on Thursday as a major snowstorm bore down on the northeastern United States, delaying or canceling thousands of flights.

The first major winter storm of 2014 brought bone-chilling temperatures and high winds from the lower Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic coast, with parts of New England, including Boston, bracing for up to 14 inches (36 cm) of snow by Friday morning.

"As this winter storm unfolds, bringing heavy snow and high winds to many parts of the state, I strongly urge all New Yorkers to exercise caution, avoid travel and stay indoors," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

Amid flight cancellations that hit just as many travelers were returning from holiday breaks, officials at Boston's Logan International Airport said that up to a quarter of its scheduled flights had been canceled on Thursday afternoon and evening.

But Ed Freni, aviation director of Massport, the state agency that operates Logan, said that two runways remained open and that he expected the airport to continue operating as long as it was safe to do so.

Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie both ordered state offices closed on Friday for non-essential employees, saying they expected the worst to hit between late Thursday and early Friday morning. The state of New Jersey said public schools would be closed in Hoboken and Jersey City on Friday.

"The real action is going to get cranked up this evening and during the overnight hours. We'll have heavy snow, windy conditions, reduced visibilities," said Kim Buttrick, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts.

DE BLASIO'S BIG TEST

The storm posed the first major challenge to New York's new mayor, Bill de Blasio. Problems from digging out from snowstorms have been political havoc for mayors in the United States' biggest city for decades.

After his first emergency management meeting, De Blasio pleaded with New Yorkers stay off the streets.

"This is the first of many times I will say please stay indoors. Stay out of your cars. If you don't need to go out, please don't go out," he said.

The powerful storm forced cancellation of nearly 2,500 U.S. flights with another 7,000 delayed. Chicago's O'Hare International and Newark's Liberty International Airport were hit the worst, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks air travel.

New York's three major airports were preparing to accommodate stranded travelers whose flights were canceled.

"We have a few hundred cots at each of the airports should you decide to become an overnight guest," said Thomas Bosco, an official with the Port Authority of New York and Jersey, at New York's LaGuardia Airport. The authority also runs Newark and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Ruben Raskin of San Jose, California, who was in the Boston area visiting his girlfriend, worried that his Friday flight out of Logan could be delayed or canceled.

"It kind of reminds me why I moved to San Jose after going to college out here," said Raskin, 23.

Conditions in Boston were bad enough by afternoon that the "Frozen Fenway" winter carnival, featuring sledding and college ice-hockey at the baseball stadium where the Red Sox play, was canceled for Thursday and Friday.

TEMPERATURES TO PLUMMET

The weather service said the mass of Arctic air would drop temperatures to levels 20 to 30 degrees below normal, with record lows possible on Friday.

"Temperatures are expected to plummet tonight and tomorrow with wind chills dropping as low as 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-32 Celsius)," said Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. "That is a very dangerous set of circumstances."

The low temperature in the contiguous United States on Wednesday was -47 Fahrenheit (-43 Celsius), reached in Van Buren, Maine, and tied in Babbitt and Embarrass, Minnesota, the weather service said.

Patrick told non-essential state workers to head home at 3 p.m. ET (2000 GMT) as did his counterparts in neighboring Connecticut.

Forecast snowfall varied widely, with Washington expected to see under an inch (2 cm), Philadelphia and New York 4 to 8 inches (10-20 cm), Hartford 6 to 10 inches (15-25 cm) and Boston 8 to 14 inches (20-36 cm).

But even before the worst of the storm hit slippery road conditions made driving a hazard in many storm-hit areas.

In Cleveland, Ohio, Chris Behm spent an hour trying to reach the vocational training center for developmentally disabled people where he works before calling the commute off and urging his 19 employees to stay home.

"It was terrible on all of the roads and there is more weather on its way," Behm said. "It just wasn't worth it to open and possibly kill someone."

Officials in Boston and Providence said schools would be closed on Friday, and in other districts throughout the region, parents were bracing for the possibility their children would be home on Friday.

"It's tough with these storms because I end up using days off that I don't want to take," said Kristen Carson, who had taken the train into Manhattan from her home in suburban Montclair, New Jersey. "After the holiday, it's really kind of a pinch."

(Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency is trying to develop a computer that could ultimately break most encryption programs, whether they are used to protect other nations' spying programs or consumers' bank accounts, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The report, which the newspaper said was based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, comes amid continuing controversy over the spy agency's program to collect the phone records Internet communications of private citizens.

In its report on Thursday, The Washington Post said that the NSA is trying to develop a so-called "quantum computer" that could be used to break encryption codes used to cloak sensitive information.

Such a computer, which would be able to perform several calculations at once instead of in a single stream, could take years to develop, the newspaper said. In addition to being able to break through the cloaks meant to protect private data, such a computer would have implications for such fields as medicine, the newspaper reported.

The research is part of a $79.7 million research program called "Penetrating Hard Targets," the newspaper said. Other, non-governmental researchers are also trying to develop quantum computers, and it is not clear whether the NSA program lags the private efforts or is ahead of them.

Snowden, living in Russia with temporary asylum, last year leaked documents he collected while working for the NSA. The United States has charged him with espionage, and more charges could follow.

His disclosures have sparked a debate over how much leeway to give the U.S. government in gathering information to protect Americans from terrorism, and have prompted numerous lawsuits.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that the NSA's collection of phone call records is lawful, while another judge earlier in December questioned the program's constitutionality. The issue is now more likely to move before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the editorial board of the New York Times said that the U.S. government should grant Snowden clemency or a plea bargain, given the public value of revelations over the National Security Agency's vast spying programs.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The Chinese military will establish a joint operational command over its military forces to improve coordination between different parts of the country's increasingly sophisticated military system, the official China Daily reported on Friday citing the Ministry of Defence.

China has been moving rapidly to upgrade its military hardware, but military analysts say operational integration of complex and disparate systems across a regionalised command structure is a major challenge for Beijing.

In the past, regional level military commanders have enjoyed major latitude over their forces and branches of the military have remained highly independent of each other, making it difficult to exercise the centralised control necessary to use new weapons systems effectively in concert.

The report quoted comments made to China Daily by the Ministry of National Defence saying that China will implement a joint command system "in due course" and that it has already launched pilot programmes to that effect.

China currently has seven military regions traditionally focused around ground-based army units, but China's changing security interests, over claims to potentially energy rich submarine reserves in the South China Sea, has highlighted its need to focus more on air and naval forces.

China and Japan are engaged in an intensifying standoff over a set of uninhabited disputed islands, and the Japanese government appears to be ready to ramp up military spending and adjust its nominally pacifist stance to a more confrontational one as the two militaries circle each other.

China is also engaged in similar disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines.

"China has built an iron bastion in its border regions. The major concern lies at sea," said Li Qonggong, deputy secretary-general of the China Council for National Security Policy Studies, as quoted in the report.

(Reporting by Pete Sweeney; Editing by Michael Perry)

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PETALING JAYA: The local bourse kicked off the new year on a weaker note, dragged down by steep declines among blue-chip stocks with some investors booking quick profits following a sharp run-up towards the end of 2013.

Regional markets were mixed on the first trading day of the year. Thailand's SET Index dived 5.2% yesterday to 1,230.77 points on domestic political worries, but stocks were higher by 1.2% in Indonesia and little changed in Hong Kong.

"Last month was a pretty good month for blue chips. Sentiment for blue chips such as Telekom Malaysia, Tenaga Nasional and Public Bank, among others, was pretty high, so investors could have taken the advantage to take some profit," said Areca Capital Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Danny Wong.

Shares of Public Bank tumbled yesterday after the bank said it would merge its local and foreign tranches into a single counter. Shares in Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd led losing stocks, down 58 sen or 2.3% to RM24.32, followed by Petronas Dagangan Bhd down 46 sen, or 1.5%, to RM30.98 and Tenaga Nasional Bhd 20 sen lower, or 1.7%, to RM11.18.

Pacific Mutual Bhd executive director and chief executive officer Gary Gan said market volatility could also bring about potential opportunities where the use of accumulative investment strategies to ride out violent market swings could ultimately position one's portfolio for eventual optimum results.

"Looking at the local equity market, although we have seen the index hitting record levels recently, there are still sectors with attractive propositions that should continue to do well in the short to medium term," he said in a statement.

"The oil and gas, plantations, utility, construction and consumer sectors, as bolstered by positive newsflows from the recently announced Budget 2014, will continue to be the key drivers for the coming quarters but stockpicking will be key."

Market sentiment for the year is generally positive, analysts said.

Wong said the upcoming expected initial public offerings (IPOs) were a sign of liquidity in the market. However, he notes that investors should be selective in picking which IPOs to participate, based on industry and rationale for the listing.

"Relative to IPOs, it is not so broad-based that everything will go up," he said.

StarBiz reported in November that at least nine major listings are in the works this year, estimated to raise more than RM18.4bil from the market. These include Iskandar Waterfront Holdings, Medini Iskandar Malaysia, Malakoff Corp Bhd and 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

Meanwhile, Areca Capital's strategy for the year is focused on small to mid-cap stocks that have strong fundamentals, riding on external factors. The US economy, which is recovering on a slow and gradual pace, bodes well for the economies of emerging markets.

Wong said oil and gas companies, export-oriented firms and businesses that benefited from the subsidy rationalisation programme would contribute to the overall positive outlook this year.

"Small to mid caps that were overlooked last year might have their day this year," he said.

SAN FRANCISCO: Snapchat, the red-hot private messaging service, said on Thursday that it knew for months about a security loophole that allowed hackers this week to harvest millions of phone numbers and announced changes to its systems.

An anonymous group called Snapchat DB posted the usernames and phone numbers of 4.6 million Snapchat users on New Year's Eve, days after the startup - headed by 23-year old founder Evan Spiegel - brushed off warnings that its app still contained security loopholes.

The hacker group, which claimed to be based in the United States and Europe, made the entire database available for download but redacted the last two digits of every phone number. Snapchat DB said it was working to raise awareness about Snapchat's security holes, not out of malicious intent.

In its first public statement since the leak, Snapchat said in a blog post on Thursday that no "snaps" - the contents of messages - were compromised or accessed as part of the hack.

Snapchat was first alerted to the vulnerability in August by a security group called Gibson Security. Snapchat said it made changes to its system to address the weaknesses, but the company also published a blog post downplaying the threat as "theoretical" on December 27.

Snapchat DB carried out the hack and disclosed the phone numbers just four days later.

The hack was a rare black eye for a high-flying appmaker started by Stanford University undergraduates in 2011. Snapchat has soared in popularity over the past year because it allows its users - mostly teens - to send private pictures and messages that self-destruct after 10 seconds at most.

Snapchat's immense popularity among young users has made it one of the most closely watched social media companies in the world, and Facebook Inc <FB.O> reportedly offered $3 billion last year in a failed acquisition bid.

Snapchat asks new users for their phone number so that their friends can find them on the service. The phone numbers were not attached to any real names.

Calling the hackers' disclosure an "abuse" of its system, Snapchat said Thursday that it was first told by security experts in August that its "Find Friends" feature may contain a weakness.

The company did not apologize for the leaks but said it would carry out some changes to prevent further unwanted disclosures.

"We will be releasing an updated version of the Snapchat application that will allow Snapchatters to opt out of appearing in Find Friends after they have verified their phone number," the company wrote. "We're also improving rate limiting and other restrictions to address future attempts to abuse our service."

Rate limiting restricts how many times a party can query the Snapchat servers.

CHANGES 'PROMISING'

In an email to Reuters, the group claiming to be behind the New Years Eve hack called it "promising" that Snapchat was beginning to address its security vulnerabilities.

BEIJING: Growth in China's services sector fell to a four-month low in December as business expectations dropped, a government survey showed, adding to evidence that the world's second-largest economy lost steam into the close of 2013.

The official purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the non-manufacturing sector dropped to 54.6 in December from November's 56, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.

While the services PMI held above the 50 level that indicates expansion, slackening growth mirrors a fourth-quarter cooldown in factory activity and the broader economy as credit supply moderated and firms rebuilt inventories more slowly.

Ting Lu, an economist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, said another factor was the fading effect of China's "mini" economic stimulus rolled out in mid-2013 to prop up slowing activity.

"There was pent-up demand in the third quarter and we don't expect it to be sustained in the fourth quarter," he said, adding he expected quarterly growth to ease to 2 percent in the December quarter, from 2.2 percent in the previous three months.

The services PMI follows two manufacturing PMIs out this week that showed growth in China's factories slowing in December as export orders weakened.

Friday's survey showed a sub-index for business expectations sagged to 58.7 last month from November's 61.3, dragged down by the property and water transportation sectors where firms expected activity to contract.

New orders held steady at 51, though the poll showed price pressures were building. A sub-index for intermediate prices climbed to 56.9 in December from November's 54.8, while prices charged rose to 52 from 49.5.

Rising prices are in line with a widely held view among economists that inflation will grind higher in coming years, as a depleting supply of low-cost labor pushes up wage and production costs.

A Reuters poll in October found economic growth was expected to be 7.6 percent in 2013, a shade higher than the government's 7.5 percent target but still the weakest rate in 14 years.

A separate PMI survey of the services industry by Markit Economics and HSBC will be released on Jan 6. That survey covers more smaller, private firms than the official PMI.- Reuters

KOTA BARU: The state government is not against cultural activities as long as they do not contravene Islam.

Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Yakob (pic) said cultural activities like makyong and wayang kulit could be continued as tourism products if they have educational values and did not deviate from Islamic teachings.

"For example, we banned wayang kulit as it has elements of polytheism, fantasy and cult, but when it is given a new approach which can educate the people, it can be continued in the state," he said after welcoming visitors to the state at the Sultan Ismail Petra Airport here yesterday in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year 2014.

Ahmad Yakob also asked all quarters to pay attention to cleanliness because it could have a negative impact on tourism to the state. — Bernama

BATU PAHAT: SJK (C) Kong Nan in Parit Raja here has the highest number of non-Chinese students in the district.

On the first day of class yesterday, the school, which has 315 pupils including 69 Malays, welcomed 51 Year One pupils, 11 of them Malays, one Indian and one Pakistani.

"Every year, we receive a high number of Malay pupils," headmistress Tan Ah Noi said, adding that 14 Malay pupils sat for the UPSR examinations last year.

Chairman of the school board of governors Teo Yew Chuan said the majority of the pupils came from other countries and were children of lecturers or staff of Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia here.

Housewife Suhaidah Sapuan, 32, who accompanied her eldest son to his first day at the school, said she always wanted her children to learn Chinese.

"It is because the teachers are strict about discipline and my son can mix with those of other races."

Rafife Rahim, 28, whose daughter is also attending Year One at the school, said: "I did not go to a Chinese school, but I know the importance of mastering various languages to make one more competitive, besides gaining a better understanding of our neighbours."

SJK (C) Cheng Siu 2 in Jalan Tanjong Laboh also has some 30 Malay pupils among its 661 students.

Meanwhile, in Kota Kinabalu, State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said schools in Sabah are encouraged to introduce the Chinese language as an optional subject.

"Chinese has been acknowledged as the world's most widely used language, followed by English and Spanish.

"Hence, it is necessary for people to learn it, if not master it," he said after welcoming Sabah's first international guests at the Kota Kinabalu International Aiport I in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year 2014.

"What I'm saying is that we introduce the Chinese language as an optional subject so that parents can choose whether they want their children to take it up or otherwise," he added.

Masidi was responding to a question on whether the Government would consider converting the soon-to-be completed SK Api-Api not far from the city into a Chinese school.

Masidi said he was happy to note that more bumiputra students have enrolled in Chinese schools in Sabah.

KUALA LUMPUR: The two policemen who were reported to be hurt during the protest at Dataran Merdeka's New Year celebrations sustained only light injuries.

City police chief Senior Deputy Comm Datuk Mohmad Salleh said one of the policemen sustained injuries to his head from a drink can thrown at him near Lot 10.

The other policeman, who was on duty at Dataran Merdeka, fell and sustained injuries to his lip when demonstrators pushed through the police cordon.

"Both policemen later received outpatient treatment," he told reporters at the police headquarters here yesterday.

He said a photo carried by the police's Facebook page of a topless man bleeding profusely in the back of a car was not that of a policemen. A correction was later posted on the Facebook page apologising for the error.

SDCP Mohmad also said that no arrests were made after thousands of demonstrators protesting price hikes breached barricades separating New Year revellers from the protestors who had converged at the square at 11pm.

There were also no reports of injuries to members of the public he added.

However, SDCP Mohmad said police had received eight reports about the incident, lodged by City Hall enforcement officers and police officers, including the two injured.

"A special team has been formed to investigate the reports. The investigation can be concluded in a week," he said.

Gravity makes a swath of films seem redundant. Here are some past movies that have altered forever what we watch on the big screen.

EVERY now and then a film comes along that totally changes everything: whether it is expensive new technology or a cute talking pig, nothing can be the same again.

Gravity is the latest film that makes a whole swath of cinema look and feel redundant: its hard-won sense of documentary realism means everyone attempting to film a spacewalk or satellite explosion will have to raise their game massively.

This is by no means a definitive, historical list – you would have to go back to the Lumiere brothers for that – but we have narrowed it down to the six films that have made the biggest impact on movies in their current form and obsessions.

Batman (1989)

The game: Superhero films were traditionally camp, trashy affairs – even Superman: The Movie, the first big-budget comic book film of the modern era played it mostly for yuks. Batman, of course, had been mercilessly satirised in the counterculture 1960s via the pop art TV series starring Adam West, and comic book fans were used to being a subculture that was sneered at and looked down on.

How it changed: Batman's comic book writers – Frank Miller and Alan Moore among them – had left campness far behind, and Tim Burton picked up where they had left off. With his background in ghoulish animation and goth-lite comedy, Burton brought an intense, design-heavy brilliance to proceedings, overhauling the genre thoroughly and treading a careful line between high-voltage visuals and savage humour. With unparalleled merchandising opportunities alongside it, Batman took off, and Hollywood is still profiting from the consequences.

The game: You want talking animals? Before Babe, that meant – basically – a cartoon. Or puppets. Your Air Buddies, your Homeward Bounds – they were either barking to command or supplied with voiceovers by standup comics. No one could take them seriously.

How it changed: Mad Max director George Miller spent seven years developing an adaptation of Dick King-Smith's The Sheep-Pig. Using enormous numbers of animatronics, CGI lower-jaw movements and the like,Babe blew every previous animal movie out of the water: they were talking! All the time! Incredible. The seven Oscar nominations it got were a suitable recognition of its envelope-pushing status.

What followed: the Doctor Dolittle remake, Alvin And The Chipmunks, G-Force.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The game: Since the advent of the slasher film in the late 1970s, horror films tended to be rigidly formulaic affairs – remorseless killers, screeching music, screaming teenagers. The Kevin Williamson-inspired wave of post-modern semi-spoofs in the mid-1990s – Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty – helped to loosen things up a little, but horror was locked into an aesthetic artifice that appeared unbreakable.

How it changed: Directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, in trying to make a decent film to sell for cable TV, inadvertently triggered a wave of found-footage horror movies. Virtually abandoning their actors in the forest, they achieved an unprecedented level of snot-dribbling realism, which creeped out multiplex audiences to a staggering US$140mil (RM 460.7mil).

What followed: Paranormal Activity, Rec, Quarantine, Cloverfield.

Festen (1998)

The game: In the old days, no one went to the cinema to watch a video – least of all chin-stroking art cinema types, who tended to prized Bessonian lushness and painterly Jarmanisms. But by the mid-1990s the art house circuit was under siege from smart-alecks such as Quentin Tarantino on one side, and Hollywod FX behemoths on the other. Something had to give.

How it changed: Along came arch-prankster Lars von Trier – already a big noise after Breaking The Waves – and his acolytes, who came up with a "movement", Dogme 95, espousing stripped-down technology and unvarnished naturalism. Despite its built-in irony and over-before-it-began PR, Dogme 95 did one big thing: it made digital video a viable cinematic force. Festen, a knotty family melodrama that benefited from its home-video visuals, was the forerunner: a bona fide worldwide critical and commercial success, it overnight gave artistic credibility to what had hitherto been considered – technologically speaking – the preserve of poverty-stricken film students and pornographers.

What followed: Dancer In The Dark, Ivans xtc, 28 Days Later, Star Wars Episodes I and III, Zodiac ... and then everything.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

The game: Lots of people made campaigning documentaries, but cinema didn't pay a great deal of attention. Countries with state-funded TV – like Britain – found a place for them there, but in the US especially docs tended to shrivel and die a lonely death without the sports/music/human-interest angle.

How it changed: Michael Moore bucked the trend, releasing first Roger And Me (1989) and then Bowling For Columbine (2002) to acclaim and some success, largely because of Moore's avuncular, engaging personality. But Fahrenheit 9/11, in which he basically blamed the Bush family for enabling Osama bin Laden's assault on the United States, put documentaries over the top. It may not have dislodged George W Bush from the presidency, but it attracted huge audiences (taking US$119mil/RM392mil in the US alone), and lit a rocket under the entire documentary-making scene.

The game: Spectacle was key, thought the film industry, under siege from a string of home-delivery formats from DVD to YouTube. The late 1990s was the age of CGI-burnished extravaganzas – chief among them was James Cameron's Titanic – and the industry had been talking up 3D for some time, aware of the potential to charge more for a fancy format that couldn't be ripped off by the Internet. But so far it had been largely confined to Imax documentaries, family-friendly animated films and the odd gimmicky genre piece. Anything bigger tended to have an opportunist conversion from 2D.

How it changed: Cameron had been working on Avatar for years, intended as a groundbreaking visual extravaganza with full CGI characters. By the time it finally hit cinemas in 2009, no one was all that impressed with CGI – but the 3D looked fantastic, and gave the whole format a massive shot in the arm. That it became the biggest grossing film of all time helped too; filmmakers embraced 3D, and audiences did too.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf failed to show up for a hearing in the treason case against him, with his lawyers citing security threats.

The 70-year-old stands accused over his imposition of emergency rule in November 2007, but he and his legal team have dismissed the charge as politically motivated.

Conviction could mean the death penalty or life imprisonment for Musharraf, who has faced a series of criminal cases since returning from self-imposed exile in March.

His defence team said he could not attend the special treason tribunal yesterday because security arrangements were inadequate. They also complained that lawyers in the case had been threatened.

The delay comes a week after a bomb scare forced the hearing to be adjourned.

"He is unable to appear before the court because of security hazards," lawyer Ahmed Raza Kasuri told the tribunal.

The Taliban have made repeated threats to kill Musharraf, who led Pakistan into its alliance with Washington's "war on terror", and he lives under heavy guard at his farmhouse on the edge of Islamabad.

The case was adjourned on Dec 24 after explosives were found along the route he was to take to court and on Monday more explosives were discovered on the same road.

Musharraf is the first former army chief to go on trial in Pakistan, setting up a potentially destabilising clash between the government and the all-powerful military. — AFP

THE double whammy of higher foreign worker levies and a manpower crunch could send labour costs in some sectors soaring by as much as 20% this year.

The hit will come on July 1 when companies in the services, manufacturing and construction sectors face levy hikes of between S$15 (RM39) and S$200 (RM519) for each foreign worker on staff.

"The tighter labour market and the full force of levy measures are going to make it a pressuring environment for companies," said Kurt Wee, president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises.

The pain will be felt particularly in the building game. Monthly levies will increase to a record S$950 (RM2,465) for each lower-skilled foreign worker hired by construction firms.

OKP Holdings group managing director Or Toh Wat described the increase as "an all-time high", and firms that hire more lower-skilled construction workers will be harder hit.

THE phrase "living on top of one another" has never been so true. German photographer Michael Wolf has captured the immense scale of high-rise living in Asia in his artistic series Architecture of Density.

The large-scale photographs depict the density of residential architecture in Hong Kong, creating visual patterns with a somewhat overwhelming impact.

Selected works from the series will be shown on a large scale in London, with an exhibition at the capital's Flowers Gallery in January.

Hong Kong, which has more skyscrapers over 150m tall than any other city in the world, has been home to Wolf since 1994.

The photographer, who is known for his documentations of the mega metropolises, took the photographs between 2002 and 2009.

His work has been exhibited all over the world and is featured in permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.

The London exhibition comes at the same time as the release of the photographer's new book, Monograph Michael Wolf, Hong Kong Trilogy, published by Peperoni Books, Berlin.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf failed to show up for a hearing in the treason case against him, with his lawyers citing security threats.

The 70-year-old stands accused over his imposition of emergency rule in November 2007, but he and his legal team have dismissed the charge as politically motivated.

Conviction could mean the death penalty or life imprisonment for Musharraf, who has faced a series of criminal cases since returning from self-imposed exile in March.

His defence team said he could not attend the special treason tribunal yesterday because security arrangements were inadequate. They also complained that lawyers in the case had been threatened.

The delay comes a week after a bomb scare forced the hearing to be adjourned.

"He is unable to appear before the court because of security hazards," lawyer Ahmed Raza Kasuri told the tribunal.

The Taliban have made repeated threats to kill Musharraf, who led Pakistan into its alliance with Washington's "war on terror", and he lives under heavy guard at his farmhouse on the edge of Islamabad.

The case was adjourned on Dec 24 after explosives were found along the route he was to take to court and on Monday more explosives were discovered on the same road.

Musharraf is the first former army chief to go on trial in Pakistan, setting up a potentially destabilising clash between the government and the all-powerful military. — AFP

THE double whammy of higher foreign worker levies and a manpower crunch could send labour costs in some sectors soaring by as much as 20% this year.

The hit will come on July 1 when companies in the services, manufacturing and construction sectors face levy hikes of between S$15 (RM39) and S$200 (RM519) for each foreign worker on staff.

"The tighter labour market and the full force of levy measures are going to make it a pressuring environment for companies," said Kurt Wee, president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises.

The pain will be felt particularly in the building game. Monthly levies will increase to a record S$950 (RM2,465) for each lower-skilled foreign worker hired by construction firms.

OKP Holdings group managing director Or Toh Wat described the increase as "an all-time high", and firms that hire more lower-skilled construction workers will be harder hit.

AN AWARD-WINNING Singaporean scientist has started what could be Asia's first science magazine, which aims to showcase research done in this part of the world.

Dr Juliana Chan, 30, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University, has roped in other full-time scientists and doctors from around the world – from Singapore, the Philippines and India to the United States and Britain – to contribute to the quarterly magazine, Asian Scientist.

"From the very start, my goal has always been to publicise the excellent science coming from Asia, and there was no such magazine on the market focusing on the region."

Dr Chan has won several awards such as the Singapore Youth Award last year for her work in nano-medicine and tissue engineering, and for founding and editing an online version of the magazine for the past two years. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network